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Published: February 28th 2007
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In Te Anau we found ourselves in a tourist town of the first degree! Hard here to find many kiwi accents! We decided to take our Lonely Planet's advice and get ready to head out early (7am is early for us) the following morning on the road to Milford Sound.
The drive from Te Anau to Milford Sound was about 1.5 hours and one of the most scenic roads we've seen yet. It had rained the night before, but cleared up partly by the morning to reveal lots of tiny waterfalls cascading off all the mountains. The road was pretty routine for the first half but then plunged into the mountains. A few pretty wild one way sections stuck to the side of cliffs and a one lane - 2 direction tunnel which left us wondering what happens to the tour busses that flock this way each day? Or more to the point what happens to the people like us in cars when the tour busses show up?
At Milford we took a senic cruise for about 2 hours around the fiord and right out to the edge of the Tasman Sea. Scenery and waterfalls around here are absolutely
Sterling Falls- Milford Sound
Hurrah for waterproof cameras - Pam was the lone tourist taking a shower to get this one as the rest of us ran for cover. amazing although we understand from the crew on the boat that it hadn't rained (other than the night before) for 3 weeks and the falls were about as small as they had ever seen them. Also on the cruise we saw some seals fooling around on the rocks and some of the elusive penguin! The boat captain was very excited to show us those (even though they were swimming and looked more like logs than anything) as I think it was the first time he had come across them on one of the tours. As a part of the cruise we also stopped off at the Milford underwater observeratory. This is a chamber suspended about 8m under the surface which gives you a glimpse into the sealife of the sound. The guide claimed that that was a pretty normal density for the rest the walls of the sound but if so that's pretty incredible.. Other ramdom facts about Milford that we picked up were that they on average pick up between 7m and 9m of rain in a year... maximum 24h rainfall recorded was 448mm!!... the rain comes down so fast that it forms a fresh water layer above the
Underwater Observatory
A diver showing us a sea slug salt water that regularily gets up to 15m thick... Those are all I can think of at the moment.
We finished up with our tour etc at Milford around noon and then headed for Queenstown where we were very excited to be staying (in the same place!!) for 2 nights!.
Queenstown is pretty neat though somewhat Whistler like I thought. It wants to be 'the adventure capital of the world' and is probably right up there in the running. All over the town there are companies specializing in jet boating, sky diving, bungee jumping, jet boating, and all sorts of strange kiwin extreme sport inventions (like line flying or fly lining or something like that.... like a cable swing or high line or whatever they call it at Whistler but in this version it's not just you that slides down the cable.... you slide down the cable strapped to a wing-less airplane because apparently there is no way you could go fast enough without a motor...). Pam and I however were just excited to sleep in the next day and not have to drive another 6 hours!
So after a lazy day of reading eating and watching
a movie it was time the following morning to get back on the road up to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. Another 6 hour drive and there we were. Once again here we were stopping for 2 nights but this time not so much to relax as to be able to see all we wanted to.
Day 1 at the Franz Josef glacier we went for a half day Glacier hike after the torrential rain abated in the morning. On our half day version of the walk our guide took us out to the terminal face of the glacier (walk through the rainforest) then set off up a set of stairs and on to the ice field. One quick mention of our guide (Goose - the guide for the other half of our group was Donkey) to acknowledge his massive mullet as I'm sure Pam will point out in the pictures! Once up on the glacier we got to treck through various crevasses and whatnot but the highlight of this one has to be an iris. This is a crevasse that is closed at the top. Goose tells us that we are very lucky to have seen this
(and walked through it) becuase they only find them about once every 3 or 4 months in an accessible place and they tend to only last 4 or 5 days at that elevation before they melt away. The iris was a little interesting at the far end when I (Mike) realized that I was really glad I'm not any bigger as I had to squeeze myself between the ice walls to get out!
On the whole the glacier walk was very cool and mullet or not Goose definately knows his stuff. At the elevation we walked up to on the Franz the glacier was moving about 1m per day and at the terminal face is advancing about .5m per day. This was a neat contrast to the Tasman Glacier which we saw earlier on the trip which is retreating at about 200m per year currently. Where the Tasman had a lake / pond after the terminal face the Franz was acting as a buldozer pushing up a ridge of gravel as it comes.
Next day we were scheduled to go on a 9am helicopter tour of the Fox Glacier and then a fly past of Mt Cook (just
past the head of the Fox) but woke up to find the weather socked right in to the valley level. We checked in with our helicopter company just to be safe and they suggested that maybe they'd be able to go around 11? We decided to stick it out and try for a flight and lucky for us the cloud started to lift around 9:30 and we were ready to fly at 11! Our pilot wasn't happy going up to Mt Cook because he said there was some pretty good turbulence up that high so rather than get right up to the peak they decided to take us on a tour of both glaciers (the pilot added an extra orbit at the top so we just got to glimpse the peak of Cook). We're trying to load a video of that orbit but not sure if it'll go - the computers at this shop aren't the most cooperative.. Part of the flight also included a landing on the snow in the accumulation zone of the glacier. Speaking with the pilot he says it's not unusual for them to get 40 to 50m of snowfall at the top of the mountains
Mike in a Glacial Iris
This picture is a bit blurry but it's still a good one! We were apparently lucky to been able to walk through this tunnel. But it was so narrow we could barely fit. We had to put our arms forward and wiggle against the walls to get through. Here's Mike trying to break on through. each winter in addition to 10-14m of rain over the course of the year! As it turned out we were the lucky group of the day as the weather started to fill right back in down to the terminal faces of the glaciers as we were headed back down.
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Carmen
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Great Photos
Don't you love glaciers, I do... They are so neat to look at. It deffinately looks like you are still having fun. It makes me want to go there too!! Love ya, talk to you soon Carmen